Dedicated to the proposition that intellectual acuity is not a prerequisite to political discourse

Monday, October 3, 2011

In Defense of Liberally Contributing Conservatives*

*Alternate title, "This is How You Disagree With Someone Without Being a Complete Ass"

My esteemed colleague, Loudoun Insider, recently offered a
series of posts here and here questioning political contributions from local businessmen, raising
legitimate and fair questions about potential conflicts of interest. While I agree that the candidates should carefully
consider how they would address those potential conflicts, I see nothing wrong
with the contributions per se. The real
test (and it’s a big one) is how these candidates will handle those challenges
if elected. Until then,
I’m going to give them all the benefit of the doubt.

People contribute to candidates’ campaigns in different ways
and for different reasons. Most of those
who contribute do so by stuffing envelopes, walking door to door or putting on
a bumper sticker. Others contribute
financially, some more than others. Motivations differ, too. Some, if not most, are motivated by an
ideological kinship with the candidate.
Others are motivated by the opportunity to build access and influence with
decision makers. One thing they all have
in common, though, is an unspoken hope, if not expectation, that their efforts
will cause the candidate to least remember them once elected. In that way, each contributor, big or small,
stands to gain some degree of self-importance or influence in the political
process if his or her candidate wins.

Although the resulting influence cannot reasonably be
denied, I believe the contributions made by these businessmen are motivated primarily
by the ideological kinship with Republican candidates. They just happen to use a checkbook instead of
a bumper to help the out. As LI pointed
out, John Wood’s contributions have been almost exclusively to Republicans as
have Bill Dean’s. If they were really
looking to guarantee influence, they would be making similar contributions to
the Republicans’ opponents.

I don’t think these contributions are outrageous, either. Take the case of Ralph Buona, whom I believe
to be a solid candidate. He probably has
taken the most from these businessmen (a total $5,000 from Mr. Dean and another
$5,000 from Mr. Wood), but the contributions still total less than 20% of what he has raised. Moreover, he’s a
businessman himself, and it’s only logical that the people he knows, and thus
his likely contributors, would be from the business community. Certainly, these contributions are nothing at
all like the $25,000 that El-Atari gave to Sheriff Steve Simpson in either amount
or character. As such, the contributions
do not strike me as so large or unusual as to inherently influence his vote as
a supervisor.

That said, BOS candidates still need to do some advance
planning on the complex and emotionally charged OpenBand issue. Accepting larger than average contributions from
OpenBand’s owner, MC Dean, with the OpenBand contract in play next year could
create perception problems. Indeed, even
assuming renewal of the OpenBand contract truly is the best thing to do for the
County, how can such a supervisor vote for the contract without looking like he
or she has been paid off? It’s quite
similar to the situation with developers and zoning issues with the 2003-2007
board. Whether the votes were proper or
not, supervisors who took substantial contributions from these special
interests repeatedly voted in their favor, creating the appearance of undue
influence.